Bloodthirsty
by DragonMaster65
Summary: Savage. Brutal. Ravenous. Rey isn't one to take things lying down. She'll lie, cheat, and claw her way up the chain from desert rat to bounty hunter to Hound of the Emperor himself. {Companion piece to Imperium. Part 2 of the Pax Ut Prius series} [In-Progress]
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This fic is a sort of prequel or companion piece to Imperium, which is part of the "Pax Ut Prius" series.**

 **Tags and fic warnings will escalate as more chapters are added.**

* * *

Dogging footsteps, she slipped into the shadows with a near supernatural ease. The target - a pair of bedraggled sentients from the Outer Rim, bloody and bruised - had pried open the doors of the slowly decaying starship to escape the omnipresent heat of the desert.

They were sealing themselves inside of Rey's trap.

The halls were once perfectly polished panels of gleaming black metal. Now, ropes of frayed cable dangled from the ceilings and any consoles remaining were naught but empty husks. Scavengers had long since stripped this ship, so close to the trading outpost, of all worth.

Rey pulled herself into an air duct, skirting around the gaping holes and splintered supports. She could hear the two sentients. Though they both hacked and coughed sand from their lungs, one sputtered wetly.

Injured. Weak.

Easy prey.

The corridors did not allow for significant deviation. This particular craft lacked any sort of elevator system - not that one would be functional without a power system. Reason dictated they would either search out the cargo hold or the captain's quarters.

Rey had chosen her pathway with care - she could divert to either without losing sight of the bounty. Her hand caught on a sharp curve of metal, drawing a cut across her palm. Glaring at the offending panel, she tore off a strip of fabric from the base of her shirt to quickly bandage the wound.

Her eyes returned to the pair below her. Even having paused they were no more than a few paces farther along the corridor. The one who could breath properly spoke. Its language was foreign to Rey. Brandishing a long-fingered hand, they pointed in the direction of the living quarters.

Tighter space. Easier to lock in. Riskier combat situation.

A solution presented itself to Rey and she patted her belt to check that she still had - yes, there it was. Still concealed in the air duct, Rey advanced to the pair's destination. Dropping down, she rolled to soften the noise and the pain coursing up her ankles. It was nothing, a minor distraction much like the wound that was slowly bleeding through the cloth about her palm. She now clasped a grenade in that hand.

Her hiding place was simple but effective, tucked inside the refreshing unit of the largest quarters. They would chose this one over the smaller single crew quarters to avoid splitting up. It was reflexive to hide together, to avoid separating from the only other person who would protect you from the bounty hunters intent upon your trail.

Rey waited patiently. She closed her eyes now, listening for the slight groans and creaking in the floor panels first. Then the actual footsteps. And the labored breathing.

Speech again.

Counting to ten, Rey waited until she was certain that both were inside of the room. Then she flicked the pin and rolled the grenade into their sanctuary. Light and sound exploded as one, searing even against Rey's closed eyelids. She darted into the room as the flashbang detonated, extending her baton to its full length with a swift movement of her wrist.

Her targets were completely disoriented, wailing and grabbing at their triple sets of eyes. It would do no good. Even if they hadn't gotten the full force of the blast, they would be blinded for at least a minute. That was plenty of time for Rey to act.

The tip of her baton was weighted, snapping into the first sentient's skull with a _thwack_. Rey moved with her strikes, slamming the heel of her off-hand into the base of their jaw. The sentient toppled, making room for Rey to approach the other.

They were the weaker one, only able to cover their eyes with one hand as their other hung limply, useless. They pleaded with her, begging for mercy. Rey didn't need to understand their language to comprehend the intent behind the words.

Snarling, she advanced. This time it only took a single strike to render them unconscious. Securing their awkwardly skinny limbs with binders took very little time. Gritting her teeth, Rey surveyed the situation. Two very heavy, limp bodies.

A pickup, then.

Rey double checked their bindings before exiting the craft. She needed open air to signal for the pickup. Retrieving the comm unit from her stashed speeder, Rey dialed for the bounty hunter she had gotten the contract from. He was surprised but pleased to hear that both were alive and in her custody. "Send me your coordinates and I'll wire you the funds once I have the targets in my hold," he said curtly.

That suited Rey just fine. She crouched on her haunches under the shady overhang of the downed ship. Hung was an honest man - as honest as bounty hunters could be. A ship arrived within the hour, sleek and dark.

Rey dusted the sand from her shoulders and shuffled her feet back and forth. Something ate at her nerves. More so than usual, that is. As the craft turned to complete its descent, she noticed the bright red seal emblazoned on the wings. Her eyes widened. Her escape route was blocked, the ship landing firmly between her position and her speeder. A foolish mistake.

Turning, Rey scrambled to get to the open door of the crashed craft. Blaster fire scorched the ground under her feet and singed the durasteel just above her head. "Stop right there," a cold voice called out. "Unless you want to lose your life."

Her feet stilled. Still, Rey stared at the ship in front of her rather than turn around. It would give her that extra split second lead if she ran again. Her window was dwindling by the moment. Should she take that risk? Become the hunted?

A hand wrapped around her torso, drawing her up against white armor. "Girl secured. Scanners indicate two life forms inside." The soldier's voice was mechanical, lifeless.

"Lieutenant?"

"Leave the girl. Fetch me those targets. I'd rather not linger any longer on this mission. It's already taken far too long," the officer responded.

"Those are _mine_ ," Rey hissed. Her fingers pried at the plates of the armor of the soldier who held her. Nails scraped on hardened plasteel, useless. Adrenaline ran ice cold through her veins. She had to escape, had to protect her captives. They were food and water for a week. "You can't take them from me!"

The arm around her waist tightened to crush the air from her lungs. Rey found herself turned to face a slender human man dressed in a black uniform. Dust and sand had already begun to collect in the seams of the jacket, dulling the perfect darkness of the cloth. He crouched down to her level, a cold sort of amusement dancing across his face.

"But we already have. And besides-"

Rey snarled and lunged forward. One arm wrenched free from the soldier's grip, and she clawed at the officer's face.

Though he jumped away in time to save his skin, she successfully wiped the smirk from his face. Her arm was grabbed and bent painfully behind her back, the soldier issuing apologies. "She's stronger than she looks, sir," they said.

"She's a _child_. If you cannot detain a pre-pubescent _brat_ then you have no place in the Order!" the officer retorted, standing several feet back now. His eyes flicked back down to Rey, anger seething in their depths now. Good. That made two of them.

He slowly returned to his crouch, his face inches away from Rey's. Taunting her. "I suggest that you consider your position very carefully, girl. We are taking our captives. You will nod and smile because I am showing you a mercy that of which you do not deserve," he hissed.

Though she could not escape the now iron-clad grip of the soldier, Rey pulled herself up to as tall a position as possible. "They're mine. My bounty. _I_ caught them. _I_ deserve the money, not you," she growled.

Still, no matter what she yelled, nothing would stop the soldiers who were now returning from the mouth of the ship with the sentients firmly in their grasp. They were barely conscious, stumbling rather than walking to the Order's ship. The officer continued to smirk, watching with amusement as Rey became more and more distraught.

He allowed the soldier to let go of Rey. She fell to the ground. Hot, angry tears spilled finally. It was over. She had failed. Hung would come and there would be no bounty waiting. No money for either of them.

A hand cupped her jaw roughly, forcing her to look up from the sand which eagerly consumed her fallen tears. "You saw nothing here today." Grey eyes compelled her to listen and accept every word.

"If you speak of this to anyone, you will receive no mercy from myself or those I command. Do you understand?"

Rey set her teeth. Still, she jerked her head in as best a nod she could while contained in the man's grip. A credit chip was shoved into her hand, and Rey was left kneeling in the sand, alone.


	2. Chapter 2

Three years later, Rey no longer had to work through an intermediary to get her bounty contracts. Hung had been great until he up and vanished without a trace. Word had it he crossed paths with some Outer Rim up-and-comer and hadn't made it out on top. Too bad. Now Rey could take both their cuts.

Rey didn't cry over the loss. There was always another hunter looking for boots on the ground. They could call in a few faces to look out for and cover far more of the galaxy than one could solo. Rey had proven that she could cover as much ground as needed on Jakku. And the years of working for a semi-honest credit had paid off. Unkar Plutt, the slimy bastard, had long since thrown her to the wolves when Rey refused to work for slave's wages recovering ship salvage. He was still more than happy to take her credits to part with an airspeeder he couldn't get rid of because it had a hair trigger acceleration drive that tended to grate against the built-in speed regulator.

Three hours loaning out a repair bay was all it took to rip out the regulator and kiss goodbye to the pathetic one-twenty klick radius of the local landspeeders. She could wrangle up an illegal caravan in the south western hemisphere and drop them off to her contact on the equator; in the _Dragon-Bird_ , Rey was beginning to live rather than just survive.

Several weeks of HALO jumping across the planet's surface gained her enough cash to invest in housing that had a door and an expectation of civility. It was still tricky working up new contacts who balked at hiring out a fresh-faced teenage girl, but often the solution was to wait them out. Jakku was her home - if one could call the desolate hell-hole a home - and Rey could stalk a target for hours without needing to take a break from the climate. The home-field advantage won out if her near-perfect acquisition record wasn't enough to convince them.

That record was in jeopardy, though, as Rey chewed over the latest transmission that beamed into the _Dragon-Bird_ 's readout. She was supposed to be in a holding pattern over Heckta, a small province known for nothing at all, waiting for a bounty to emerge from hiding. Her attention was instead distracted by the message blinking across the terminal.

 _HIGHEST PRIORITY_

 _4 X STANDARD FEE_

 _CONFIDENTIALITY REQUIRED_

 _BEGIN BRIEF_

 _Request pickup from hostile environment. Targets to be brought to secondary location for extraction. Medical attention necessary. Hostiles must be neutralized without death occurring. All targets must be extracted for payment._

Rey thumbed at the comm switches, debating the pros and cons of ditching out on her watch over Heckta. Four times her normal fee from this particular contract would set her up for two months once she settled down. Or it would cover getting a new stealth spray to eliminate her craft from low powered scans.

She'd already typed the coordinates into her flight computer. Even flying to the pickup location _and_ to the extraction point would take less than four hours. Eight round trip plus one or two hours to actually extract the targets… she could be back to Heckta before the sun rose again on this side of the planet.

Who was she kidding. Her current contract wasn't a challenge. As soon as the Twi'lek emerged from her hiding place, it would be a simple bolo to the ankles and an easy - _tiny_ \- fee collected back at the outpost. No, this transmission hinted at genuine cunning and strategy. This contract always paid well and on time, which was impossible to pass up. Rey threw her engines into drive and got the hell out of Heckta.

* * *

The sun had long set on this side of the desert. Rey relied upon scans to guide the _Dragon-Bird_ to the surface half a klick from the first marker, nosing down in a shallow gully. These wastelands were typically uninhabited even by Jakku's scavenging guilds. The only ships that came down here were pathetic skiffs in even worse shape than her airspeeder had been in. No profit there.

 _So why had_ \- no, Rey wasn't paid to ask questions. It kept things simpler. Don't ask why someone had a bounty. Nine times out of nine they deserved it. There wasn't a tenth time. Not when you didn't question the credits coming in. That was how she'd landed this contract in the first place. Someone had passed her comm link along - maybe Hung before he got killed? - and Rey reaped the profits.

One last thermal scan was on the books before Rey departed the speeder. It didn't do to go out on an extraction mission and get surprised by the foes you were meant to drop. She slung her weapons belt on, not needing to check if everything was there. Instinct supplied her the cue to grab a pair of throwing knives just in case.

The scan showed nothing besides a few low thermal readings of the native fauna.

Tucking the knives carefully into her bracers, Rey settled into a comfortable pace. The coordinates she'd been given led just into the much deeper ravine upwind from where she had landed. Taking this approach lent her both the sightline advantage and kept her scent out of detectable range. She'd learned after a rather nasty contract where the targets' pet Rocchi caught wind of her and let the whole lot escape through back channels. Recovering from that screw up had cost her more than the payout in the end.

Rey trusted her instincts that led her to approach the ravine's mouth at a crawl. Every few minutes she heard a volley of blaster fire followed by silence. And then shouting in Basic.

Targets, sweet targets.

She let them sweat out their position as she surveyed the open cave system through her binoculars. They'd survived for two hours so far. They could manage a few more minutes. Rey couldn't make out specifics from their shouting, but so long as she heard them, they had to be alive. No countering commands were coming from any other tongue, so either they were fighting non-verbals or a group that didn't bother learning a code language. Rey's own language skills were rusty in anything not spoken by the local mechanics or runners, but she could usually pick out "over there" and "fire!"

No, whoever the group was fighting wasn't some local crew. Her binoculars struggled to show anything beyond flailing sand and flashes of blaster fire. The moon didn't help enough, not at this distance. Switching to infrared revealed a whole new story. A cluster of humanoids lingered where she'd seen the blaster fire coming from. Her targets. They weren't very clear in the scanner, save for one figure. The one idiot who hadn't worn body armor, apparently.

Countering them was a hulking mass of heat. It was too indistinct to count limbs, but at least Rey didn't see it hacking up venom. It might have been an immature nightwatcher worm, but the way that it moved didn't seem right. This creature was a hunter, not a scavenger.

Licking her bottom lip, Rey thumbed through the other scanner functions. Nothing helped clarify the creature's image. There was just too much interference. She'd have to go in blind. Her binoculars fit back into her weapon's belt and her hand now gripped a bulbous grenade.

 _Hostiles must be neutralized without death occurring_. That was going to complicate things, but it could be done. Rey levered herself to her feet with her free hand and started off at a trot towards the open cave. Blaster bolts scattered past her, the closest scorching the sand beneath her feet into ash and glass shards. None hit her, instinct guiding her to lunge and dart out of the way.

The beast came into view first and Rey now understood why she hadn't heard any noise from it. A thick leather muzzle was lashed around its mouth and jaw, keeping it from baying. This was no worm. Its hide was plated and thick, and the beast lashed out with curved, lethal claws. Rey didn't recognize the species.

"Friendly on the ridge!" someone shouted. Rey took stock of the situation in her next scattered heartbeats. She hadn't been detected by the creature yet. It was still intent on trying to reach the soldiers past the boulders they were laid up behind. Every time it got close, the ground would explode. The tiny mine couldn't possibly dig into those heavy plates, but it was enough to startle the beast. And the constant rain of blasters had a dizzying effect, even to those trained to deal with the array of lights.

Except now the blaster fire halted. Rey hauled ass as the air cleared and the creature regained some of its overloaded sight back. She stuck out in the moonlight as the only easy target. Rey didn't intend to stay that way. She made for the closest dislodged boulder and scrambled to top it. Air whistled behind her as the creature's claws came within inches from her legs. "Keep firing!" Rey shouted. "It's not blinded anymore!"

The grenade in her hand wasn't of use when she was this close. The sonic wave would decimate her eardrums at this distance. Now was when Rey wished she'd bought that jetpack from a travelling Mandalorian instead of her client list. Clients didn't save you from getting too close to the enemy.

Rey fumbled with her offhand to get one of her knives. A claw hit her leg, the metal of her greaves screaming as it was rent in two. She'd only get this chance to not lose that limb. Twisting, Rey drove her knife into the closest part of the creature she could reach - its flailing foreleg. Her blade skittered across its hide until it found the crease of a joint. Down the tip sank until Rey pulled away, bringing a rush of purple ichor along with her blade.

Deep within the beast's chest, a scream was born and died. Its mouth still couldn't open, though its eyes lolled and froth dripped from its black lips.

The blaster fire returned, aimed this time well above Rey and the creature. Another wheezing sound thrummed in the beast's chest as it threw itself away from Rey's reach. "Don't hurt her!" a voice shouted over the din.

Rey's lips peeled back in a snarl. She appreciated the sympathy, but if they kept holding their fire back, she would never be able to bring this creature down - lethally or otherwise. "Come on you dumb brute," she hissed. Rey launched herself from the boulder, rolling on the ground to conserve energy and storm back to her feet.

Her goal was to get it farther away from the rest of the trapped men. At minimum she could fulfill that end of the contract. The maneuver worked not a minute too soon as one of the soldiers hit the suspended opening of the cave. Earth shattered and another mass of stone joined the other boulders on the ground. The beast scrambled away and Rey heard its heavy footsteps on the sand behind her.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Rey dropped the grenade and prayed to every god that didn't exist that she could outrun the blast. Her knife fell to the ground as she slapped both hands over her ears.

White. She could hear the color white. Her teeth rattled in her slack jaw. Her final stumbling steps were enough along with the edge of the shockwave to dump her over the next dune.

Disoriented didn't properly describe the sensation. Rey felt cut off from her own limbs as she struggled back to her feet. Silence sang in her ears. She couldn't even hear ringing yet. It took two tries to move in the right direction, towards where she'd fallen from.

Between the dune she stood on and the cave opening, the beast lay. Its foreleg shook as it further bled purple, but otherwise it didn't move. Dull eyes sat behind heavy, half-open lids. It was in shock. Rey thumbed at one of the pouches of her belt until she managed the snap open. She couldn't count how many patches she had in her hand, but four wouldn't be enough to kill the creature. Shouldn't be.

Rey approached the beast warily, just in case it was about to lurch to its feet again. Air rushed in and out its matched sets of nostrils, the only sign of life. At least it was alive. Rey peeled each patch off its backing and slapped them on one side of its face. Its eyes shut completely as the drug fed into its system through the thinner hide there.

White sprang into view. Rey jerked her head, fingertips grazing her holster. But no, the soldier had their weapons trained on the creature and not her. If they were speaking, Rey still couldn't hear them. Only a high pitched keening was audible yet.

A dark form emerged from the cave, impatient and indignant. He was an officer of some sort, the one who had shown up on her thermal scanner. Pale skin glowing in the moonlight marked him as an offworlder; you couldn't spend any time on Jakku without having burnt that flesh to a dusty bronze. He didn't even have a helmet on, and Rey shook her head when she noticed his lips moving. Tapping one ear with exaggerated motions she said in a voice that was probably too loud, "Can't hear you. Sonic grenade."

The switch was instantaneous. He said something and the soldiers around him dropped their blasters back to their holsters. Then they were moving again, the sound of their boots on the sand lost to the ringing that still sounded in Rey's mind. She focused on the officer since he was clearly the one in charge. He approached her in brisk strides. One hand ungloved the other and he quickly finger spelled, _BNV_?

Basic Non-Verbal. Whatever military group he was from, they were very well educated. Rey herself was rusty on genuine BNV, having picked up the dialect mostly from the call and returns that strike squads used to communicate in one another's blaster scopes. Rey lifted a shoulder and returned with an affirmative.

Her understanding waned as his irritation made his signage rapid and twitchy. _You killed the dog? The hound?_ He used a sign similar to dog or pet, but the meaning of the subtle change was lost on Rey. It could have been the creature's actual name, she supposed.

 _Not dead. Sleeping._ She hit the wall on her known signs and had to painstakingly finger spell out the exact neurological patches she had used.

Rey didn't need to hear to understand the single word that spat from his lips. "Kriff," the officer swore. He brushed past her to join the soldiers gathered around the unconscious beast. The next few minutes standing there didn't mean much to Rey as she watched his lips move in response to the helmeted soldiers around him. One peeled off the patches from the creature's face. It wouldn't matter now; the drug absorbed into the bloodstream within minutes of application, so the patch was an empty patch of sticky fabric. She focused on checking herself over for injuries and searched out the ruined pieces of her greaves.

The armor was useless, but Rey figured she could still cut it fairly easily to load into shotgun shells or maybe her homemade fragmentation tripwires. A length of cord tied the ruined metal to her weapons belt. Snapping her fingers next to her ears still sounded like nothing, which was starting to give Rey pause. If she had ruined her hearing for this one job, she would have to strong arm them into a bigger payout. And pray that it would cover reconstruction of her ears.

 _You're coming to space._ Rey squinted as she realized the officer was signing to her again. That wasn't the deal. The officer repeated his demand, slowing down his motions to help her understand better. _You're taking us to our ship_.

That made more sense. Rey signed an affirmative once again and surged back to her feet. _DB over hill,_ she replied, following up with an obvious point in the direction of her ship. The officer nodded and indicated that she take the lead. A half dozen steps forward, Rey realized that the soldiers weren't following behind.

The question was on the tip of her tongue and she tapped her fingers with her thumb - a nervous habit. She wasn't supposed to ask questions, even on contracts like this where they were in abundance. To add to her frustration, she had to swivel her head every few seconds to be sure that they weren't about to walk into some new ambush. It meant making awkward eye contact with the officer.

Rey relented to her inner demons and signed one question. _Returning to pick up troops? Then drop point?_

 _No,_ he replied. _Only me._ His next sentence confused her until he broke it into the simpler terms she was used to. _Troops guarding payload._ He took several long strides to walk next to her. It made conversing easier, which was probably why Rey continued to ask questions. The fact that he was calling the beast a payload and the contract demands to not kill it connected in her mind.

 _You taking hound?_ Rey used the term he'd signed before.

He grimaced and corrected her on her form before finger spelling the full name. _Chirthumund, it's named in Basic. Yes. We came to get it._

 _Why?_ Rey awaited a reply and pressed once more when he didn't offer one. Perhaps he'd missed her sign. _Why take the Chirthumund?_

 _I want it. I get what I want. It's mine._ He smirked as he signed the last comment. Something about it set Rey to thinking as she tried to place what seemed so familiar about the exchange. She chewed over the conversation, such as it was, as they approached her parked airspeeder.

Rey ignored his eyes darting over the various repairs and tweaks she'd done to her ship. She instead settled into the cockpit and set about her startup sequence. Being unable to hear the engines whirr to life chafed at her. Her hand hovered over the next series of switches. Yes, the chair was vibrating underneath her. That was a good sign. She continued with startup, ignoring the officer blinking owlishly behind her.

Her finger hovering over the release on the dampeners, Rey turned to look at the man. _You need to comm with other ship at drop point?_ she asked.

 _Yes, but it's a long trip. Later when we're closer,_ he replied. Lifting one shoulder, Rey pressed the release. They shot into the air, rocking the unsuspecting officer harshly into his seat. Rey wished she could hear him cursing instead of just watching his lips move. His face somehow paled further as she eased into full throttle.

 _Not far for a Dragon-Bird,_ she signed with a cocky smile. Of course Rey knew how to sign her ship's name. She had priorities.

Still, it would take twenty agonizingly long minutes to arrive at the drop point, even at full throttle. It was enough to finally place where she'd seen the red haired officer before. As her speeder hovered above sand once again, Rey turned to her passenger.

 _Before you go to your ship, I have a question for you Lieutenant,_ she spelled carefully. A quick check of the NVB database mid-flight had helped her to regain some level of grammatical control.

He started visibly, his lips parting as he reflexively spoke. It came across as a dull buzz to Rey's injured eardrums. Rey shook her head and pointed once again to her ear. His lips curled into a snarl. _I am not a lieutenant,_ he signed.

 _No longer, but you had been,_ Rey retorted. _I remember. You took_ my _payload._ She used the same term he'd used for the creature with a wry smile.

His expression flattened as he schooled his emotions behind a blank wall. Good. Rey had his attention. _I need more credits for this job. Hazard pay,_ Rey demanded.

 _You were paid for that bounty. Greatly paid,_ he replied.

Rey nodded and threw down her trump card. _Not asking for that bounty money. Asking to cover for my ears. Only fair. And, if you don't pay, I might not keep forgetting that I've seen you._

His hands flexed by his waist. Rey met his gaze evenly, daring him to counter her demand. She might have been young, but she knew how to get what she needed to survive. _You saw nothing here today._ His lips moved in time with his fingers.

Pressure surged in her head. Rey twisted to look at her instrument panel to make sure they didn't drift too far in the currents. The ship had barely shifted an inch from where she'd stopped it. Frowning, Rey looked at the man in front of her carefully once again. She had initially thought he'd slipped her mind simply because she hadn't heard him speak, one of her major cues to recognizing people. But now she wondered if there hadn't been something more.

 _Will forgetting get me my credits?_ Rey pressed. She extended a hand out and raised an eyebrow.

The officer inhaled sharply, his grey eyes narrowing as he continued to stare at her. Rey felt her heart thrum faster in her chest. She was careful to not react as he reached into his jacket and pulled out multiple credit chips. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. There was a month of food just sitting inches from her. Maybe two.

His grey eyes flicked up to regard her carefully before returning to the chips. Two went back into his jacket and the other three were placed onto Rey's callused palm. The officer held up a thin finger and turned to the comms system.

Rey's thumb caressed the chips before they were stuffed into a small lockbox under her seat. This on top of the quadrupled pay from the actual contract would have her sitting pretty for plenty of time. When she sat back up, she watched the officer finish what he was typing. It was an encrypted file, the decryption key prompt blinking on the screen. _If you see another Chirthumund, use this,_ the man asked.

 _Please,_ he added in a welcomed afterthought.

Leaning over his shoulder, Rey frowned and pointed at the decryption prompt. She watched as he typed in five characters, laughing as she recognized the word he'd chosen. Moving back to her seat and sending the _Dragon-Bird_ to the surface finally, Rey paused to ask, _What if you get promoted again, Major?_

He grinned toothily. _Then things will be going according to plan._


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: This chapter is where things start getting… mature. The end point of this fic is still sort of up in the air, but essentially we're going to be moving through some delicious plot to end up at some even more delicious kink.**

* * *

The remainder of Rey's teenage years only further cemented her status as a reliable contact in Jakku's seedy underworld. Her name was passed from one desperate client to another with assurances that "the issue would be eliminated." Not dealt with. Eliminated. Rey took pride in the distinction.

Building up a network of support resources across the planet's surface was at the heart of Rey's success. There was only so much that instinct and quick reflexes could do. Fresh supplies and a place to lay low when the local authorities started sniffing around were equally as valuable in the field. The time and credits that it took to earn those contacts had been extensive, but Rey had reaped more than a fair bit of profit from the effort.

Profits that could be spent on just a touch of self-indulgence. Just past the equator of the planet under the sun-baked crust lay a system of steam vents and hot springs. The Gonlank family had taken over the caves decades ago, carving out the red rock into a very expensive, very _private_ bathhouse.

Water was practically currency of its own on Jakku. Rey's _Dragon-Bird_ only contained a relatively tiny twenty-five gallon tank for drinking and cooling. The craft had a sonic shower which was standard on Jakku. Bathing in water - cool or otherwise - was a luxury that few had access to.

Every few months, so long as her jobs had been running well, Rey took a few extra credits from her budget to spend on a visit to the Gonlank baths. Her budding rapport with the property manager allowed her the benefit of securing a private room for a hundred under the going price. She had to come on a non-weekend, but her schedule rarely made that a problem.

There was also something to be said for a mid-week pampering. The air inside was humid, an odd sort of status symbol. Rey had long since grown indifferent to Jakku's heat, and the sensation of water permeating the very air was surreal. Her first few visits she'd paid through the nose for one of the insulated, chilled pools. It wasn't worth the cost.

Rey would rather sink into a private hot spring for a third of the price and spend the rest on company. Massages, grooming, food and drink; anything considered luxurious was available given enough credits and time to acquire it. Rey might have been practical with her spending for her work, but when here, she liked to indulge. And Eridanis, waiting on a cushioned couch wearing gilded eyelashes and nothing else, was about as indulgent as Rey could conceive.

The young woman was only a year or so older than Rey herself, somewhere in her early twenties. She'd been suggested to Rey on one of her last visits by the manager, and Rey had not been disappointed. Eridanis skirted the line between companion and paramour; Rey wasn't one for ordering her to do any one thing. Rather, Rey would arrive and whatever mood took them suited her just fine. She didn't pretend it was anything other than a very well put on show, but it was entertaining nonetheless to talk easily with Eridanis just the same as she could find the young woman's head between her legs.

Today Eridanis started much as she typically did by helping Rey to undress. Her fingers paused when she spied a freshly healing blaster wound on Rey's back, but she didn't otherwise comment on it. It was one of the things that Rey enjoyed about Eridanis' company. She didn't try to pry into Rey's professional or personal life. Their conversations were always about others or places they hadn't been to before. Rey might have been suspicious otherwise; her contracts paid dearly for privacy and she valued her own just the same. She wasn't without enemies, either.

Still, her time at the bathhouse wasn't the place to worry about those who envied her success. Rey hummed when she stepped into the water. There wasn't anything quite like the sensation of bathing, not when living on a desert planet. If she ever had the credits, she'd buy herself a pool like this.

Eridanis sat on the upper tier of the pool, waist deep with her legs to either side of Rey. It allowed her to work at Rey's shoulders with her quick, clever fingers. Avoiding the still tender blaster mark, she gradually made her way down and up Rey's back. It was bliss and Rey felt each worry and concern melt away under Eridanis' methodical touch. She sighed and closed her eyes as the woman slowly dragged her carefully rounded nails along her scalp.

"They should pay you more," Rey murmured.

Eridanis' laugh rang in the chamber, a sound just as beautiful as she was. "I'm paid very well, but you're more than welcome to go above and beyond if you wish," she teased.

Rey twisted around and stretched on her toes to reach Eridanis' face. She captured the young woman's lips with her own. Her golden eyelashes fluttered, distracting Rey for a moment. She really was a gorgeous thing, all gilded beauty. "I have something else in mind," Rey growled.

Her teeth grazed Eridanis' neck, her collar, the swell of her breast. She paused to wrap her arms around the woman's torso and pull her out of the tub. Now Rey could get a better angle. Her head was at the perfect position to begin working her way down one of Eridanis' legs. Taking her time, Rey's free hand lightly ran over her folds. She grinned toothily before resuming her slow trail of kisses as the slight tease made Eridanis shudder.

Still, there was no rushing the main event. Rey sucked one red mark next to another as she approached Eridanis' cunt. Her eyes pressed closed as those heavenly fingers once again threaded through her hair. Eridanis gripped her hair just for a moment too tight, the slight bite of pain telling Rey she wanted more than just teasing.

All the more sweet was the soft groan that Eridanis let out as Rey passed over her folds only to latch on to the smooth skin an inch away. The fingers in her hair tightened again, this time not letting up until Rey had finally moved to drag her tongue over her clit in a featherlight touch. Rey could feel her breath hitch and even out as she began to lazily circle the plump little nub with her tongue.

Her face buried in the woman's thighs, Rey followed Eridanis' tiny gasps and whispered wants. Her tongue slipped inside of her in a slow rhythm, building up the moment until Rey had her just where she needed to be.

And naturally that was when Rey's comm rang. Her eyes flared open and her mood darkened. Eridanis dropped her hand from the back of Rey's head, and Rey stood up. "Don't go anywhere," she pressed. Whoever was ringing was about to have a very bad day.

She stepped out of the pool and dug through her discarded clothes without pausing for a towel. This conversation was going to be short and succinct. Damn if she had only clicked the thing into priority-only mode.

Her hand froze as she saw, yes, the comm was only allowing high priority calls through. Currently her shortlist included only one frequency. Her best and most reliable client. They never called directly. Ever. Everything was clinical and over encrypted messaging. Rey snapped back to reality and clicked the _accept call_ toggle.

"Rey here," she said. No matter how her heart wanted to leap from her throat, she would remain calm and professional. Her libedo was thoroughly quashed, replaced with that oh-so-familiar excitement that came from an incoming contract.

"Your services are needed. Immediately," the man on the other end of the line insisted.

Rey turned and gestured for Eridanis to leave. "That's no problem," Rey acquiesced. "Give me one second." She muted the line so that the sound of the woman leaving the pool wouldn't go through. When Eridanis passed by, Rey stopped her with a light touch to her shoulder.

"Don't mention to anyone that I'm leaving now. Come back in ten minutes and stay in the room until my time is up. Yes?" Rey ordered. It was the only time she'd spoken to Eridanis in such a demanding way, and the young woman nodded with wide eyes.

There wasn't time to worry about having broken that facade they both danced around. Rey waited until the door had silently clicked shut behind her before turning her attention back to the comm in her hand. There were more important priorities at hand. Money and a small kernel of loyalty, if only to her reputation with this contract.

"Alright, I'm ready for details. Where do I need to be?" Rey asked. She placed the comm on the bench and quickly started dressing herself again after once again muting the input.

Her mysterious nameless contract wasn't pleased. "I'm in need of a droid and two men," he explained. "The droid was last seen in the vicinity of Tuanul and the men were shot down over the Goazon badlands."

Rey arched an eyebrow. She paused in pulling her shirt on to click the communicator and ask, "How badly shot down? And in what craft?" Depending on where in the wastes they'd landed, they might well have been swallowed by the shifting sands. That wasn't far from Niima Outpost, either. If they did survive, she had a clock on how long it would take before they could charter passage out with a trader.

Static hissed as the man exhaled sharply. It was his turn to pause and gather himself as Rey waited for her answer. "There is no telemetry due to the planet's heat interfering with our thermal scanners. The craft was a TIE/SF fighter," he replied.

Special forces. Rey licked her lips and made a mental note to not underestimate either target. From what it sounded like, they were defectors from the organization. "Forward any information you have on the targets. I assume you know my fee schedule for a situation like this," Rey said.

He said the words that Rey so loved to hear. They were sweeter aloud, she decided. "I'm more than willing to pay triple for each head. Just bring them to me, alive and operational," he ordered.

Rey bared her teeth in a vicious smile. "With pleasure, General."

* * *

The _Dragon-Bird_ hovered in the air, engines purring to a perfect, whispered tune. Rey's scanners ran double-time, searching the region for her quarry. She'd gone to Tuanul first, favoring the underdeveloped cultists to her childhood "home." Arriving at the village had been a shock, to say the least. Rather than quiet huts and reverent worshipers plodding their way through their sad little lives, she'd arrived to a smoldering funeral pyre.

Her curiosity gnawed in her stomach. The religious people were vastly technophobic, trying to survive in the desert without moisture catchers or solar-powered cooling. That's why it was odd to note the blaster scorches in the sand and on the walls of the few fragments of buildings still standing. Her question of where a droid might have come from was answered at least in part by the scattered remains of a downed fighter.

As she waited for the scanners to finish their run of the sector she was currently flying over, Rey flipped through her computer's database. She'd spied a foil in the wreckage of the downed fighter that didn't seem to match the TIE structure she was familiar with. Her ship knowledge was limited to whole ships. Spite had motivated her to buck the scavenger lifestyle that had been thrust upon her and that included the encyclopedic knowledge of spacecraft.

The scanners beeped softly, letting her know to move onto the next grid point. She was slowly crossing the expanse between Niima and Tuanul, passing over a section of the wastes that many scavengers avoided. If her quarry had been smart, they would be hiding there. Her contacts in Niima were on the lookout, too, with the information she'd been forwarded from her client.

Lurching forward, she brought the _Dragon-Bird_ ten more klicks forward and started up the scanners again. This was dull. Her eyes turned to the next page in her ship directory. _Ah, here was something interesting_.

An X-wing. Anecdotal evidence suggested that while they were favored by the Core Worlds of the Republic for enforcement, they weren't uncommon to be found in the possession of rogue paramilitary groups beyond the Republic's sphere of influence. Jakku was pretty much ignored within the confines of the New Republic's armistice with the old Empire, but that didn't mean they were oblivious to the growing rise in scuffles. It made for good business, even.

Rey spent the next few grid points researching the few known groups that used X-Wings. Her intel wasn't as up-to-date as she would have liked, but there was enough that she had a vague idea who she was tracking. The general's forwarded information had named one of the men an escaped captive. Potentially he was the droid's owner and member of one of the anti-Imperial rogue groups. The other was a defector from the organization's military corps.

She ignored any implication that she was in fact working for a segment of the Imperial remnant. It didn't matter where her money came from, so long as she was still making enough. The general paid her well each time that she brought him a bounty. That was what mattered, not what side of an arbitrary line she was standing next to. She'd just as readily work for the Republic, provided they contacted her first with cash upfront.

The scanners beeped rapidly, information taking over the archive page she'd been reading. Buried under the wastes was a massive hunk of metal. The dimensions were too off to confirm if it had been a TIE of any kind, but the residual thermal signature sent a thrum of pleasure through Rey. Jakku might have been a desert, but ships only got that hot from atmospheric entry.

Another reading popped up, just on the edge of her scan radius. One life form heading towards Niima.

Rey ran her tongue along the tips of her teeth. She didn't want to spook him, if this was one of her targets. The warm coil in her gut told her it was, goaded her to hunt them down mercilessly. Coaxing the _Dragon-Bird_ further into the air, she slowly approached the blip on her sensors.

Visual confirmation was critical. She called up the long distance cameras mounted along the nose of the _Bird_. He wasn't wearing the white armor that she was expecting, but his dark skin and close-cropped hair did match the file photo she'd received. This was the defector, the soldier.

Rey put the engines into hover again as she hustled to the back. Sure, she had her usual ready gear on her, but it paid to take all the advantages she could. They were still at least another seven, eight klicks from the outpost. Her quarry wasn't going anywhere that she couldn't see.

Her armor consisted of several main pieces - a breastplate, leg and arm bracers, helmet - and luck to avoid taking a hit to her vulnerable joints or feet. It was too damn hot to don a full suit. Her belt carried all her smaller but infinitely valuable flashbangs, sedatives, and remote detonators. And of course she had her blasters; the rifle went across her back and the more compact handheld sat in her thigh holster every hour of the day.

After checking each piece still sat snugly where it should, Rey pulled up the secondary nav system. Her pet project had turned out to be quite useful. Poised by the rear exit to her airspeeder, she could maneuver that last half kilometer before quite literally dropping down onto her target.

Approaching the defected trooper, Rey sent the _Dragon-Bird_ into a dizzying spiral down. Her free hand tangled in the cargo netting next to her to keep from losing her footing. It had the desired effect. She slammed the ramp release and let go of the netting, sliding out to land atop her quarry with a feral scream.

She'd completely blindsided him. When on the run, it's bewildering to see a craft descend from the sky with engines flaring only at the last second to keep from crashing into you. Even more so to then have a fully kitted bounty hunter slam heel-first into your shoulder.

Rey tumbled over him as they both fell into the sand. "What?" he cried, struggling to stand. Rey threw herself onto her feet and charged, low to the ground, into him. Her target was below his waist, knocking him down again as she kept him off balance. If he had a blaster, she was now too close to use it effectively.

She grabbed one of his wrists, flinching as his other hand slammed into her side over and over with a closed fist. Her armor soaked up some of the hit, leaving behind a dull ache. "Who are you?" he bellowed.

He wasn't getting it. Rey straddled his chest, swapping her hold on his arm with the heel of her boot. It was awkward, but it allowed her the chance to pull out one of her knifes. That's when his eyes went wide and his struggles became more frantic. She let him push her away and used the momentum to drag the point of the blade along the front of his leg as she moved. It was a threat, letting him know that she was the one in control here.

The more he struggled, the greater her advantage soared. He was in full-blown panic, kicking at the space where she'd been. Rey covered her eyes from the sand he cast up. Her goggles. She had forgotten to drag them down from atop her helmet.

He took advantage of her distraction to scramble to his feet and start running. As Rey wiped away the grains of sand from her eyes, she laughed to herself. Perfect. She swapped the knife for a round object from her belt, jogging lightly after him. His leg kept him looking down and slowing to press on the wound rather than watch his back.

Rey threw the ball. It opened as it spun through the air, the weights dragging along tightly wound cord. The bolas caught around the man's legs and he flopped once more to the sandy ground. Again he cried out.

"Who are you? I don't want to go back to the Order. You can't make me," he said as he tried to work at the cords around his feet. Rey dragged her blaster from its holster and pointed it at his chest. He froze when he spotted it and slowly brought his hands up.

"Please," he said.

Rey stalked closer, her barrel never wavering from him. She took out a pair of simple binders and threw them at his feet. "Where's your counterpart? The pilot?" she pressed rather than respond to his pleas or questions. She had no time to waste explaining the inevitable to him.

He took a long look at the binders before slowly sliding them on. Rey eyed the bleeding wound on his leg once again. It wasn't life threatening. He could hurt for a few more minutes. "Poe died in the crash," he spat finally.

Rey squinted, studying his face. He didn't seem to be lying, but she doesn't want to assume anything. "And the droid?"

He lifted his bound hands. "I don't even know what it looked like. Please, you have to let me go," he plead once again.

Rey holstered her blaster and grabbed his extended hands to pull him to his feet. Then, she spun him towards her hovering craft and pushed him forward. "I don't have to do anything. Walk."

Her forced march stopped short of the fully extended ramp as screaming engines break through the atmosphere. Rey shoved her target to the ground and whirled to watch as a half-dozen TIE fighters raced eastward, to Niima. "No," she growled. They were going to make a complete mess of the hunt. She yelled again when explosions detonated at the outpost.

One out of three wasn't good enough. Her pride burned as the TIEs scattered before regrouping into another bombing run. Rey hauled her single captive to his feet and threw him bodily into the _Dragon-Bird_. Her feet flying over the grating, she threw her airspeeder back into the sky, towards Niima.

It's no use. The TIEs had made a third, a fourth flash across the sky. Several pursued fleeing spacecraft back through the atmosphere and Rey watched hyperspace engines flare in mockery. Somehow, she knew that her missing droid and pilot are on one of them. Calls to ground all ships come across from the spaceport master, no doubt to allow the soldiers she spotted now to search for their targets.

Her teeth grit together and Rey landed her speeder. The man in the back of her speeder started to move again. Rey threw herself from the console to haul him into her lockup. It doesn't make her feel better to hear him grunt as the rough handling exacerbated his leg. She had failed. She should have gone to Niima first.

A high priority, higher even than the spaceport master, message beeped from one of her side consoles, demanding her attention. She dragged herself back to her chair and stared at it for a moment. Frustration turned to fury as she read the green text.

 _TARGETS ESCAPING. WHERE WERE YOU?_

Rey punched out a response but before she had the chance to hit send she saw another entry.

 _TARGETS ESCAPED._

 _CONTRACT CANCELLED._

Her blood boiled. She had the defector. The general had no right to pull her contract when she still had one of his damned targets. Rey edited her message and slammed the send prompt.

 _CANCELLATION REFUSED._

 _Target B in custody, alive. Delivery point requested._

Rey ignored the pounding on the brig door. He could wreck his hand on the durasteel for all she cared. He wouldn't be her problem much longer. Waiting for a response dragged on her nerves. What if he didn't respond? He could have removed her frequency from the comms. There wasn't a lot that she could do about it, either. So much of her efforts went to her network on Jakku and so little went towards other systems.

Her heart leapt when she received a set of coordinates. No text went with them, but it was something. Rey eyed the still-burning airfield. Soldiers were searching the wreckage and approaching any idling crafts that had listened to the halt command. None had noticed her speeder yet.

"Kriff," Rey swore, switched her engines into full throttle. She could outrun some damn TIEs.

Surprisingly she didn't have to. Her destination was just over the ridge, by a shuttle bearing the familiar red blazoned logo. Rey barked at her captive to shut up and back away from the door before she entered. He had smartened up and didn't try anything when she hauled him from the brig down the ramp.

His good nature faded the moment that he saw the transport shuttle, but Rey had a tight enough grip on his forearm that he couldn't do anything. Tuning out his frantic pleas was easy. "I have a present for the General," Rey called to the nearest officer. She kept a tight grip on the defector as a pair of soldier approached along with the officer.

She was holding a credit chip. That was good news. Rey didn't recognize her but she didn't expect to. "Your payment, as agreed," the officer said. Rey released her captive as soon as she had the chip in hand. Her eyes narrowed.

"This is full payment for all three targets," Rey said. Past history told her this could be a trap. Take the credits for a job not done and get shot in the back on your way out. Rey's fingers itched to grip her blaster.

The officer nodded. "You're coming on board. General Hux has a… personal request," she said.

Rey blinked. That wasn't in the playbook. "I'm a grounder," she insisted. "I don't promise anything I can't deliver on. Find someone else. Take the defector as an apology for the others." She tried to pass the credits back. Not getting branded a failure was more important than taking credits she hadn't earned. She didn't want to end up with an unpaid debt thanks to this damn contract.

The woman wouldn't take the credits back. "I was told to bring both of you back with me. Don't make this more complicated than it needs to be," the officer said. Rey didn't miss the small nod she made to another pair of soldiers. This was moments from spiraling out of Rey's control.

"Fine. But I don't want to come back and find my ship scavenged for parts," Rey said. Her fears were partially calmed as she watched four soldiers move to stand watch rather than force her aboard. Her gut twisted, Rey stepped into the shuttle. She took comfort in the blaster still on her thigh and the rifle on her back. They hadn't been so insulting as to disarm her before dragging her away from her home.

The shuttle moved slower than her craft, but the engines could break fully from the bonds of atmosphere that her _Dragon-Bird_ couldn't escape. Feeling the shift from Jakku to the emerging artificial gravity set Rey ill at ease. Her attention instead went to the massive ship they were now approaching.

She'd seen Star Destroyers before. Jakku bore the weathered carcasses of the Empire and the Republic's crafts. There was something starkly different than seeing one buried to the hilt in sand dunes compared to hanging in perfect orbit of the planet. The captive seats over buried his face in his bound hands rather than look out the viewport as Rey did. Rey wondered, just for a moment, why he had chosen to risk defecting from the warship above them rather than serving out his contract. Then her thoughts then to reassess the client she'd assumed she'd understood.

General wasn't a rank easily earned, not on a ship that large. It would take blood, unwavering loyalty, and battle-tested, iron-forged determination. Rey added another tally to her mental score for the general. Maybe two. She chewed over the tiny addition of information that the officer had dropped as well - the general's name.

She let herself be directed by the officer, swept through the hanger bay that yawned wider than Niima Outpost in its entirety. The hallways gleamed with polished floors and white panels of lighting. Rey fought to map out their path as they wound their way through turbolifts and corridors. By the time they arrived at a neatly organized office, Rey had lost track of her initial twists and turns.

There wasn't enough time between being told to stay and when the door opened again for Rey to do more than scan the room for listening devices. A camera lurked in one corner, dormant. "Don't touch that," a familiar voice spoke from the doorway.

Rey turned and slipped her pocket scanner back away. "General," Rey greeted warily. She refused to let him know how much she'd underestimated his organization. Perhaps that had been the point.

They sized one another up. It had been more than a few years since she'd rescued him from the Chirthumund capture. He hadn't changed much, save that his uniform now included a greatcoat. His name suited him, Rey decided. It wasn't all soft and airy, like her own. Rey didn't wait for him to speak first.

"I know that I should have focused my efforts on Niima first," Rey explained. "I did deliver the soldier, the one who defected. I'm sorry that I couldn't prevent the other one from leaving Jakku." The admission tasted like ash in her mouth. She'd made mistakes before, but never one that she couldn't recover by using her other contacts.

Hux started to pace, moving across the space behind his desk rather than sitting at it. "I know several bounty hunters that I can get on this, someone with a fast ship. They know all the hiding spots in this sector," Rey promised.

He stopped and shook his head. "It needs to be done properly," he growled. "You were supposed to get it done."

"I wasn't the one who decided the best solution was to bomb Niima," she retorted. That hit a nerve. The general's fist slammed against the desk, knuckles first.

"That wasn't my intention, either. Damn this whole _kriffing_ situation," he snarled. Rey edged closer to the desk as she made the realization that he wasn't directing his anger at her. He was angry at himself. He'd lost his surefooted stance that she recognized.

She stopped before she got actually touched the desk and his eyes flicked to meet hers. "You need him alive and the droid functional," Rey said. She studied his face, the way that his nose flared with each inhale.

"Yes," Hux confirmed. "I need you to find them."

"I'm a grounder," Rey repeated what she'd told his grunt down on Jakku. Already the planet felt too far away. The star destroyer was cold, sleek.

The general's lips pursed. "You took a contract to find them," he countered. "I have ships, resources."

Rey forced herself to turn away and look at the office rather than the man behind her. This was why she preferred working through intermediates. It was too easy to get caught up in the client's stories. Her eyes fought to find something in the office to look at. There was nothing else. All that the man behind her had was his rank, his power.

"You said the contract couldn't be cancelled," Hux insisted. "So I'm ordering you to finish it." His plots and machinations had brought him this far and now Rey had put everything in jeopardy.

Her fingers drummed on her blaster grip. A chance to rectify her mistakes, to prove that she could go off-world. Unlimited resources at her disposal to chase down a single man and a droid. Rey turned back to the general.

"Tell me where to go."


End file.
